The Life of Julia (Libertarian Remix)
How Obama's - and Romney's - policies will make one woman's life more miserable.
The Obama-Biden campaign has just released the cartoon slideshow "The Life of Julia," which takes "a look at how President Obama's policies help one woman over her lifetime—and how Mitt Romney would change her story."
In our remix of that effort, we take a look at how President Obama's policies is already helping to make one woman's life more miserable than it has to be – and how Mitt Romney would pretty much do exactly the same.
Under President Obama: Julia's father is arrested and put in jail for running a legal medical marijuana dispensary in California, where President Obama's Justice Department has overseen a drug war that Jacob Sullum calls in many "ways even more aggressively intolerant than George W. Bush's."
Under Mitt Romney: "We've got to not only continue our war on drugs…but also to market again to our young people about the perils of drugs."
Next: The best place for immigrants is anywhere but here…
Under President Obama: Julia's mother is among the more than 1 million immigrants that Obama has deported since taking office while promising not to deport immigrants, and loving them very much.
Under Mitt Romney: Julia's mother is also deported, but only after cutting his lawns.
Next: When college is a necessity, it will necessarily cost more and more…
Under President Obama: Julia is ready to start college at a four-year state school, which now costs $55,000 a year thanks to persistent tuition inflation fueled by massively expanded student loans and other grants. She wants to see a doctor to get free birth control but an intense physician shortage caused by universal coverage mandates means she relies on coitus interruptus.
Under Mitt Romney: College is for billionaires only and sex is banned.
Next: What goes around comes around, usually in the form of lower economic growth…
Under President Obama: After seven years and three children, Julia finishes college but has trouble finding a job in an economy that due to record high levels of spending and borrowing is at least 25 percent smaller than it might have been.
Under Mitt Romney: Record high levels of spending and borrowing are slightly lower than under Obama, but the Navy has several more boats than it did in 1917.
Next: School choice should be reserved for those who can afford to pay for it…
Under President Obama: One of Julia's kids is forced to attend a mediocre but expensive neighborhood school because Obama has closed down school choice programs like he did in Washington, D.C. Teachers unions spent $400 million on getting Democrats elected in 2012, so really, what else could he do? Julia wants to marry her girlfriend, but Obama still refuses to support marriage equality.
Under Mitt Romney: The former Massachusetts governor bets Julia's son $10,000 that he would too have totally killed bin Laden.
Next: The future of wheelbarrows and broccoli look very promising…
Under President Obama: As publicly held debt rushes past 100 percent of GDP, Julia decides to start a new online business selling wheelbarrows in which Americans can carry their rapidly depreciating dollars to the grocery store to buy their legally mandated broccoli.
Under Mitt Romney: The Republican negotiates a deal for the federal government to collect a federal VAT on all online sales made through a weakened but still potent al Qaeda affiliates program.
Next: Why life will begin at 67, whether you like it or not…
Under President Obama: Worn out by decades of hope and change and having paid increasingly high amounts of taxes into an unreformed old-age entitlement system that went bankrupt years earlier, Julia resigns herself to the fact that she is only halfway through her work life. She is optimistic that the troops will be home soon from Iraq and Afghanistan, but probably not from Korea or the Mexican border anytime soon.
Under Mitt Romney: President Romney sells a majority stake in the United States to Bain Capital, which promises to return the country to profitability or sell off its assets within a year.
Meredith Bragg is managing editor of Reason.tv. Nick Gillespie is the editor in chief of Reason.com and the co-author of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America.
